.

Waves Break

It's a hard thing, being an old soul in a small body.

It's hard because nobody can relate. It's not something that you can understand without being in the situation yourself, and Patty is unlikely to stumble across such a person irrespective of the number of times she crisscrosses the globe in search of the elusive treasure called a place to belong.

It's hard because you have big, big thoughts about things and big, big emotions which a small body contains about as well as a can of potted meat contains botulinum. The feelings bubble and bloat and some days it feels like they might burst straight out of her. As tears or anger or hysteria, she doesn't know. She won't know until the seal finally gives, and that will be the day she finally learns what lies on the other side of sanity.

And all that's to say nothing of her big, big regrets. Patty regrets many things about the situation that led to her present. She buries these regrets deep, deep down under swaths of perk and cheer because they're too big for her. She needs time to grow into them.

Patty doesn't properly know how old she is these days. She could fill an afternoon listing numbers but they would all feel wrong. She's too old for most and too young for the rest. She never knows which side of a number she falls on and since logic has no dog in this fight she decides that there's no use in dwelling on it.

She chooses simply to exist. She carves out a passable place for herself with Yuri and Estelle and the members of Brave Vesperia and she's just about perfected being content in it. They're all a little strange themselves and therefore perfectly welcoming to a fourteen-year-old old-lady. They don't look overly hard at her, and that suits her just fine.

All but one of them.

The knight commandant, Yuri's childhood friend, looks at her very hard. He is a person who inexplicably sees to the heart of all things and he picks up on the big, big soul buried inside her from their very first conversation.

"You're Patty, right? Will you lend me your strength to rescue Lady Estellise?"

He'd understood that there was more to her than meets the eye even when she herself hadn't. She doesn't know nearly so much about him, but she tries to. She looks as deeply within him as she's able in order to pay him back for the kindness he's shown by looking deeply into her.

"No buts! Don't you dare hesitate. You need to ascertain the truth about Alexei with your own eyes!"

Flynn isn't easy to read, but he's easy to advise. She can see the troubles weighing on his heart, even if she can't see what's in his thoughts when he looks at her, and somehow, without either of them really being present about it, he begins to come to her for advice and for a sounding board for his thoughts. She scolds him when he's being foolish and he repays her by showing her a reflection of herself that isn't young or old but precisely the age she feels.

"You're a surprisingly well-oriented person," he tells her with a little trill of good-natured mirth in that soft, handsome voice of his that Patty thinks is what a warm blanket would sound like put into words.

Good-natured. The adjective suits him to a T. Where Yuri is easygoing but aloof, Flynn is serious but warm and attentive. Patty thinks it's a very good thing that her heart belongs to Yuri, because Flynn is dangerous.

Tall, kind, soft-spoken Flynn who sees deeply into Patty's big, big soul is someone who could hurt Patty very badly.

Before she'd regained her memories, Patty had liked Yuri because he was handsome and confident. Now, she likes him because he's utterly out of her reach. Her unique situation will never make things messy between them because Yuri is so helplessly in love with the princess of the empire he hates that he couldn't begin to spare a thought for Patty. He is safe.

Flynn, not so.

Even though Patty loves Yuri, she knows she needs to put some distance between herself and Flynn. She's getting too used to seeing that seductively correct vision of herself in his eyes and it's pulling her toward a road that can only end in pain for her. She does this by reminding him of where they both stand.

"You have so many troubles for one so young," she tells him on that moonlit night—the eve of their most important battle—like an old woman casually remarking on the strife of today's youth. It's an impersonal statement meant to draw his attention to the fact that she doesn't tread upon the same trail of life that he does.

It is absolutely not born of a vain hope that he will see how badly she doesn't want to be a child. How badly she doesn't want him to see her as a child. She won't let that be the reason because that would mean that she's already taken those first crucial steps down that ruinous path.

She doesn't know if it's because he sees straight through her, as usual, or if she's really fooled him when he tells her, "Every now and then you say things that are very mature."

She's still deep enough in denial at this point that she's able to brush off the remark with a joke that hits just a little bit too close to the heart of the matter.

It isn't until much later, after the Adephagos is destroyed and she's gone on enough adventures to nearly feel properly content in her skin that that little throwaway joke is stirred like a roused octopus in the cavern of her subconscious.

"Patty!"

He greets her unexpectedly on the docks of Nordopolica. He's resplendent in his neatly pressed commandant's uniform and the smile he wears when she whirls around to face him is beatific. It's been a year, and he's still the same handsome, dashing Flynn she's successfully put out of her mind for twelve whole months. "It's been so long. I do hope you and your crew aren't up to any mischief here."

The knights accompanying him are unfamiliar to her eyes and they watch her warily, taking in her pirate ensemble and sneaking looks between her and their commander with overt confusion. They no doubt wonder why the great commandant of the Imperial Army is greeting her with warmth and not arresting her on sight.

Patty wants to answer him with a joke but the words catch in her throat. She hasn't seen him in a very long time and her heart is doing little flips in her chest as that all-too-familiar blue gaze falls on her like a shaft of sunlight upon a reef.

Just last month she'd bumped into Yuri in Dahngrest. She'd run up to him, beaming, and he'd greeted her fondly with his easygoing grin. They'd had a lovely little moment of catching up before parting ways like two fish briefly caught in the same current. Yuri had looked at her face and patted her head and asked what she was up to out on her own in the great, wide world, then the moment was over and they'd gone their separate ways.

But Flynn… He's looking at her with eyes that see nothing but her. He's not thinking of where he needs to be or what polite questions he can ask about what she's been doing. He doesn't notice the curious glances of his subordinates. He bathes her in his unwavering, undivided attention, looking straight at her with the same respectful deferral he's always shown her.

She realizes, even as she struggles for words, that she's missed him. She's missed him quite terribly. She's missed the way he looks at her and sees her. The way he speaks not to her child face but to the big, big soul inside her that she'd nearly buried.

"If I were, I gander it would be your job to arrest me?" she teases, and she's proud when the words manage to slide naturally off her tongue.

Flynn could arrest her. It was one of the Imperial Knights' duties to apprehend lawless searobbers such as herself. Although Patty and her crew never hurt people, they had very sticky fingers where treasure was concerned and they'd done more than their fair share of breaking and entering. The name Aifread alone was reason enough to lock her away until her flesh withered and fell from her bones.

The knights standing unsurely behind their commandant would be all in a tizzy if they knew who this little girl their esteemed and upright commander was talking to really was.

Flynn doesn't joke. He's always perfectly sincere. Perfectly earnest. So when he leans down and takes her hand, and with an amused, and dare she think even borderline mischievous, twinkle in his eye says, "I have half a mind to. It's only of time before I'll need to be concerned about you doing some real damage out here."

The ship of her thoughts runs aground.

Flynn's perfect, handsome face is right in front of hers. He's still smiling that genuine, upright smile. His dangerous blue eyes look right into her big, big soul as he tells her with utmost honesty, "It's good to see you, Patty."

Patty's beached thoughts stutter and groan, lurched by the waves of this man's attention. The moment the surf lifts the hull, she knows that she's arsed.

oO0Oo

I can't be the only one who noticed Flynn and Patty making eyes at each other in the latter half of the game. Their Japanese dialogue was so packed with chemistry that it nearly bowled me over. I couldn't help writing a little something for them when I saw that nobody else has yet. This might be the ultimate rarepair, but I'm sure there's someone else out there on my wavelength.